We Need To Talk About Kevin at London Film Festival

We Need To Talk About Kevin at London Film Festival

17 October, 2011
by: Naima Khan

Lynne Ramsay cleverly scrimps on the script and gives us more images than we need in her excellent depiction of motherhood and madness.

Some of the visuals in We Need To Talk About Kevin have you wondering just how obviously Lynne Ramsay needs to hint at the unseen carnage. But her script, written with Rory Kinnear, is note perfect and the resulting feature is the ultimate lesson in how to base a film on a book, a film which we'll soon hail as a classic.

It takes little of Lionel Shriver's original text, which is made up of wordy, desperate letters from Eva (Tilda Swinton) the mother of a teenage murderer to her husband (John C Reilly). Instead Ramsay's film focuses on the gaping void between mother and child, and Eva's quiet efforts to fight off a complete breakdown.

She presents a strong case for the innate evil which Kevin exposes to his mother but is smart enough to keep hidden from everyone else and ultimately arrogant enough to believe he can get away with. When he's with Eva, neither of them talking much, he defecates at will to anger her, but to his father he simply has trouble potty training. A lot will be made of Tilda Swinton who appears to have been made for her role, but John C. Reilly also manages to do a lot with his few scenes.

At times he is us, the audience, looking in on his wife and finding it difficult to connect with a woman who can't connect with her child. But he has the additional task of silently choosing his loyalties and questioning his inclination to side with Kevin.

And while Ramsay is subtle with much of the dialogue, she lays her cards on the table when it comes to the imagery. Like when we see Kevin ripping into a pale, wet lychee as he explains why he doesn't blame himself for his sister violently losing her eye while in his care. At first it feels like overkill, but Ramsay insists on prolonging the close-up, thereby turning the scene into something grossly disturbing because of the sheer blatancy. It's a scene which, like most of the film, strikes a perfect balance. 

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Naima Khan